Book of Nathan

by Curt Weeden

  “Ah, Mr. Bullock,” Silverstein said. He rested his cigar on the lip of a brass and walnut ashtray. “I’d pretend to be surprised, but the fact is we thought we might see you tonight.”

  Running a men’s shelter steels the nerves. You get hardened to misery, despair, brutality, and hopelessness. Acts of violence are no more the exception to everyday life than addicts speedballing themselves into oblivion. After twelve years, you think there’s no aberration left that hasn’t been thrown in your path. But then an Arthur Silverstein shows up to prove how wrong you can be.

  Dong punched me to one side with his Glock, then placed the Book of Nathan disk between Silverstein’s ashtray and a bottle of Glen Garioch Highland Scotch.

  “Your boy just murdered Arcontius.” I shot a quick look at Dong who looked as unperturbed as the man who gave him the order to break Abraham’s neck.

  Silverstein poured himself a glass of Scotch. “Murdered? I think you’re mistaken. Abraham’s body is at the foot of a stairway on the east side of the building. Terrible tragedy. Makes you think, doesn’t it? Just a simple misstep and you’re dead.”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Silverstein shrugged off my comment. “Abraham is—or, should I say, was—known to be a little too fond of this.” The billionaire hiked his glass. “There’ll be an autopsy, of course. The toxicology report is going to confirm Abraham had a high blood-alcohol level. Heavy drinking and a long flight of stairs. What a shame.”

  “Arcontius is lying face down in a construction site on the other side of the main building,” I said warily. The muzzle of Dong’s handgun pressed against the small of my back reminding me that the killer was only inches to my rear.

  “No, he’s not. You see, where Mr. Dong left off, other people moved in—people who are very skilled at making a misfortune look like an accident.”

  Ellis Island, it seemed, was overrun with other people. Quia Vita had at least two representatives waiting for the Book of Nathan handoff. Arcontius had claimed there were Almiras Society agents on deck ready to check the authenticity of Le Campion’s disk. And now Silverstein was telling me he had his own team on the field.

  Watching Arcontius get slaughtered like a barnyard chicken had sent me into temporary shock. But now I was face-to-face with a reality named Silverstein and his henchman Dong. I wondered why Dong hadn’t left me with my nose in the mud next to Arcontius. I was still breathing, but given the look on Silverstein’s face, maybe not for long.

  “So you knew Arcontius was working for the other side,” I said. The question sounded complimentary. Wow, you clever old fart, you really are a smart bastard. “When did you find out?”

  “Quite some time ago,” acknowledged Silverstein. “Several years, actually.”

  I wasn’t surprised. “How much do you know about the Almiras Society?”

  “Everything.”

  “What about Dong?”

  I threw a sideways glance at the Asian, who stood like a fixture, his face void of emotion. Maybe there was a conscience inside that massive body. Another peek at those empty eyes and I dumped that idea.

  “Thaddeus works for me,” Silverstein announced. “He’s a long-time employee, and I suspect he’ll remain a loyal worker if I continue putting the right amount of money in his pocket. Like most everything else on earth, allegiance can be bought and paid for. Am I right, Thaddeus?”

  Dong didn’t respond. I took his silence to mean a fat paycheck more than offset having to put up with Silverstein’s arrogance.

  “Arcontius thought Dong belonged to him,” I said.

  Silverstein grinned. “So he did. But that was never the case. Dong kept me informed about all of Abraham’s doings, including his work with the Almiras Society.”

  My brain was in a spin cycle, desperately looking for any way to escape. The only option that came to mind was figuring out how to stick a shard of distrust into the relationship between the old man and his Asian muscle.

  “Did Dong mention how he let Arcontius steal millions from you? Did you know he said nothing while Arcontius sent truckloads of cash to the Almiras Society—probably the most radical pro-life movement in the country?”

  Silverstein laughed. “Nice try, Mr. Bullock. I controlled the flow of any money Abraham removed from my accounts. Whatever he took was used for benign purposes—I made sure of that. True, Arcontius did siphon off a lot of cash. But the information I got in return made whatever he stole a good investment, considering what I was able to learn about Abraham’s secret society as well as Quia Vita.”

  I could practically hear Arcontius screaming in hell. “You knew Arcontius worked for Judith Russet?”

  “We used Abraham to feed Quia Vita information that took Russet’s group on more than a few futile missions.”

  Silverstein’s candor made me shiver. Whatever hope I had of surviving was going up in the billionaire’s cigar smoke. The old man wouldn’t be divulging this much information if he intended to keep me alive. I could practically feel Dong’s fingers digging into my Adam’s apple. I checked my watch. A minute or two after eight.

  Concern cut across Silverstein’s face. “Expecting someone?”

  “Just the United Way team that’s on its way to bring you downstairs.”

  “That’s not how I operate. I set the timetable—not the other way around. We won’t be interrupted for another fifty minutes. That’s long enough for us to come to an understanding.”

  “What kind of understanding?”

  “You’ll recall that I paid you a ten thousand dollar retainer. Seems to me you still owe me some of your time. I have another job for you.”

  I tried to decipher what was being said. Arcontius’s body wasn’t even stiff, and the conversation had shifted to my living up to the terms of a one-sided contract.

  Silverstein spoke through a billow of smoke. “You understand, I’m sure, that you’re expendable. But eliminating you might not be necessary if you do what I ask.”

  I wiped a line of sweat that had beaded up on my forehead with my left hand. Silverstein didn’t appear to notice that the maneuver gave me another quick check of my watch. Five after eight.

  “I want you to deliver something to Judith Russet.”

  I thought about Doc’s description of Lewy body dementia—about how someone with LBD could bounce back and forth between sanity and disorientation. The way Silverstein talked, the old man was sane. And yet what he was saying bordered on lunacy. What was this man like when he went over the edge?

  “Deliver what?”

  “The Book of Nathan disk.”

  The expression on my face delighted the old man. He hoisted his glass and gave me a wide smile. Give Russet the transcript of a Biblical book that might prove to be the pro-life movement’s A-bomb? Silverstein hadn’t killed Arcontius to get the disk, only to turn around and hand it to Quia Vita. The old man was as devious as he was rich, which meant there was a self-serving undercurrent running through his plan. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Quia Vita won’t be getting Le Campion’s CD tonight. But in three or four days, we want you to tell Ms. Russet that you have it.”

  Which is what Judith Russet had suspected all along. That underneath a trumped-up crusade to free an innocent man, I was nothing more than a thief. I was beginning to make out the bleary edges of Silverstein’s plot.

  “My people need time to decipher the coded text,” Silverstein went on. “And since Le Campion programmed the translation so it can’t be copied, more time will be needed to re-create a facsimile of the original book. After we’re done, you’ll deliver the replacement disk to Russet, but not until she wires a second multimillion dollar payment to a Cayman Islands account I’ve set up.”

  Everything was now in full focus. “You get back the two point five million Arcontius paid for Le Campion’s notes. On top of that, you edit the Book of Nathan so it says what you want it to say before I give it to Quia Vita.”

  Silverstein released anot
her cloud of smoke. “There’s a possibility that no changes will be needed. The text might be in line with our point of view.”

  “Why me?” I asked. “Why not just drop the disk on Russet’s doorstep or put the damn thing in the mail?”

  “A CD worth another two point five million falls out of the sky?” replied Silverstein. “Judith Russet’s far from stupid. If you walk into Quia Vita with an offer to sell the disk, that’s a different story. It will simply shore up what Russet’s been thinking since the beginning.”

  “There’s a glitch in your plan,” I said. “The person who took the disk is still out there and can blow your scheme apart with a phone call.”

  Silverstein emptied his glass, poured another. “We’re not worried. Thanks to Arcontius, whoever that person might be happens to have two point million dollars of my money. Quia Vita probably matched what I paid.”

  “What about the payment due tonight?”

  “Our thief will be disappointed,” noted Silverstein. “But with so much tax-free money already in hand, disappointment doesn’t tend to linger. He or she will go quietly into the night.”

  If anyone knew what kind of impact a large amount of money had on human behavior, it was Silverstein. I managed another surreptitious time check. Eight ten. Rows of book stacks blocked a view of the Research Library’s entryway. I had no idea if Yigal and Twyla were on their way. My last hope was riding on the two of them. The thought made me shudder.

  “What if I do what you want? What then?”

  Silverstein shrugged. “Then our business dealings are over.”

  “And that’s when Dong kills me.”

  Silverstein studied his Scotch. A slight palsy in his right hand sent ripples across the surface of the light brown liquid. “That shouldn’t be necessary,” the old man said, his words thick. “It’s not that we couldn’t explain away another accident; it’s just that we needn’t bother.”

  Silverstein’s eyes began to drift. “You see, we have evidence that you masterminded the theft of the Book of Nathan disk—evidence that stays in my vault unless you force me to use it.”

  I felt my stomach knot. “What evidence?”

  “For starters, the CD case that has your fingerprints all over it. The case and a fake Book of Nathan CD will be hidden in some location—possibly even here on Ellis Island. We’ll tell anyone who’s interested that you tried to sell us the disk but after giving you a front-end payment, we decided it would be unethical and possibly illegal to do business with you. But before we turned your offer down, you gave us a few hints about where you hid the disk.”

  “You never paid me—”

  “I gave you a ten thousand dollar check—a check you cashed.”

  Silverstein had set me up from the start. He had tossed a few dollars my way and I had taken the bait without considering the consequences. Now I was on the old man’s money hook, and I didn’t like how it felt.

  “Even if you were able to sell your story,” I said, “it doesn’t explain how I got the disk in the first place.”

  Silverstein tilted the bottle of Glen Garioch and splashed out another glass. His right hand was quivering badly and a puddle of single malt landed on the tabletop, coming dangerously close to the disk. Dong made a half step toward the table but pulled up when he realized the disk would stay dry. Which was more important to Dong—Le Campion’s translation or Arthur Silverstein? I wasn’t sure.

  “Quite right,” Silverstein said. “Of course, if pressed, we could put a theory on the table. That you learned from Dr. Douglas Kool or one of your other connections that Henri Le Campion sent Benjamin Kurios a valuable item. Miklos Zeusenoerdorf and perhaps a few others like him were dispatched to Orlando to get the disk and in the process Benjamin was killed.”

  “If you knew Zeusenoerdorf, you’d understand how ludicrous that story sounds,” I said.

  Both of Silverstein’s hands were now trembling badly. “My legal team tells me Mr. Zeusenoerdorf is easily manipulated. Perhaps his story will end up like this: you paid Kurios’s driver to make an unscheduled stop on a deserted roadway in Orlando. Zeusenoerdorf shows up and steals the Book of Nathan CD from Kurios. In the process your man beats Benjamin to death.”

  “Totally insane.”

  Silverstein reached for his cigar. His tremors scattered ash on the table and his tux before it reached his mouth. “Unexpectedly, the police make an appearance and arrest Zeusenoerdorf but not before he hides the disk and lets you know where to find it. You recruit someone to pick it up and soon after you’re shopping the CD around looking for the highest bidder.”

  Eight fifteen. I wasn’t sure what was going on inside Silverstein’s head and even less certain about what was happening outside the Research Library door.

  “There’s not a prosecutor, judge, or jury who would buy that piece of fiction.”

  “My lawyers are very competent,” Silverstein pushed on. “If this matter becomes an issue for a judge, jury, or the public to decide, a man who runs a homeless shelter isn’t likely to prevail.”

  Just like Dong, jurisprudence wasn’t immune to money, especially when it could be delivered by the truckload.

  “If I do what you want, you let me live?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And Miklos Zeusenoerdorf stays in jail.”

  “I’m afraid so. But we’ll do what we can to keep him off death row. Instead of vegetating in your shelter, he’ll do his time behind bars.”

  “I’m supposed to throw Zeusenoerdorf to the wolves for the sake of your cause?”

  Silverstein shrugged. “Remember your visit to my home? I showed you a painting by Marc Chagall. The Sacrifice of Isaac.”

  I remembered.

  “Abraham was willing to take his son’s life. He understood there are forces and causes more important than any one person, no matter who that person might be.”

  “Abraham may have said he would have killed his kid, but he didn’t do it.”

  “He would have,” Silverstein said, his voice soft. “Like Abraham, I consider anyone’s life expendable if death serves the long-term interests of humanity.”

  “How does keeping Zeusenoerdorf locked up serve humanity?” I asked. “The man’s innocent, for God sakes.”

  Silverstein reached again for his Scotch, his hand trembling badly. He managed to bring the tumbler to his chest, a shaky journey that sent a rivulet of liquor down the front of his jacket. “Your man is innocent?”

  “He’s not my man. And yes, he’s innocent.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  I was at one of those life-altering intersections. Turn one way and duck around Silverstein’s question. That would have been the less hazardous route. But hell, I figured I didn’t have a lot to lose. So I headed in a direction marked danger. “I know who’s responsible for Kurios’s murder and it isn’t Zeusenoerdorf.”

  Silverstein’s body stiffened. His eyes snapped back into focus. “Who?”

  “You.”

  I got nothing. Not a word.

  “Oh, you didn’t actually get blood on your hands,” I went on. “You paid someone to take care of business. You’re good at delegating those kinds of duties. Am I right, Dong?”

  Dong didn’t respond and Silverstein remained silent. If it weren’t for the old man’s piercing eyes, I might have thought his dementia returned. But I knew better. My message was getting through. He was mute with rage.

  “Here’s how it happened. Arcontius paid a Venezuelan named Juan Perez to keep an eye on Kurios. You remember Perez—he was on your security payroll in Venezuela. Anyway, Perez was staking out Kurios’s hotel and saw a thug beat Kurios with a tire iron and throw him into the back of a van. Kurios was carted off to parts unknown with Perez in his wake until the van reached a lonely stretch of road where it was forced into a bridge abutment. The crash sent Kurios out the back door of the van and onto the pavement. Then Perez and the driver of the van got into a winner-take-all wrestling match.”

&nb
sp; “How do you know all this?” asked Silverstein. The old man was attentive now. I disregarded his question.

  “Zeusenoerdorf shows up and interrupts the fight. Perez panics and heads back to his car but not before the van driver finds a pistol and gets off a few shots. This has to be ancient history to you—but here’s something you haven’t heard.”

  I had to be sure that Silverstein was still in the real world before I continued. So I let a few seconds tick off until he finally muttered, “Go on.” Then I hit him with a jackhammer of a lie.

  “Zeusenoerdorf heard something before Perez and the van driver realized they had an audience.”

  “What?”

  “Perez was beating the van driver bloody and the guy starts begging for mercy. You know what he said? That he was just a hired hand. That he worked for you. That it was you who paid him to get Henri Le Campion’s disk even if it meant taking out Kurios in the process.”

  Silverstein glared at me. I kept talking before he had time to figure out I was bluffing. Almost eight twenty. “Here’s what I don’t understand.”

  If Yigal and Twyla were in position, there was a possibility they were catching some of the conversation going on in the back of the library. I turned up the volume. “How is it that you think cold-blooded murder is some kind of justifiable homicide?”

  I didn’t expect anything close to a confession. But the combination of Scotch and partial dementia shook out a revelation.

  “It took a great deal of money and skill to turn Kurios into an icon,” Silverstein said, his voice barely audible. “A few of us fortunate enough to have both the resources and the right beliefs were responsible for his success.”

  “You were also responsible for his death,” I said, not lowering my voice. Silverstein didn’t seem upset by my yelling, but when Dong pressed his pistol into my spine, I knew he wanted me to tone it down.

  “It was never our intention that Benjamin be killed,” Silverstein asserted. “The night he was taken from his hotel, we knew he had the disk with him. We sent someone to convince him to give us the CD. Unfortunately, he resisted and our man overreacted.”